


Nothing Ordinary

by Clocketpatch



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 19:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/pseuds/Clocketpatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Ace, I'm getting too old for this sort of thing. He's all yours from now on. I'm going home to Doris." - The Brigadier, in "Battlefield"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Ordinary

**Author's Note:**

> Oh for the love of plot bunnies! If they would just stop distracting me and let me finish one of my longer pieces! But this, this one completely grabbed me, and I didn't know how it would end until it did. Nothing I've ever written has resounded as deeply with me as this. Probably that means it's all overblown cod-swell, but hopefully
> 
>  
> 
> _I don't know what does or doesn't happen in the audios and NAs. Doctor Who doesn't belong to me (duh!) This story take place sometime after "Battlefield"._
> 
> Also, I've been told that I need to add a tissue warning to this...
> 
> RIP Nicholas Courtney, Feb. 22, 2011. You were loved by many.
> 
> * * *

  
Alistair was at home when he received the call. He was in the garden cutting the grass:

Because Doris had asked him too. Because he was a good husband. Because the rain had made the green blades grow ankle high. Because it was the first sunny day after a week of drizzle ( _not a cloud in the sky, blue down to every tree and chimney-studded horizon_ ). Because he had never shirked his duties when he was with the military and wasn't going to start now that he was creeping slowly towards his eighth decade under God's sun and Britain's flag. The world might change but he wouldn't. His feet hurt, his arms were stiff; he was old and it annoyed him, but he could still cut the grass, and he would cut it to the best of his abilities.

Because.

The garden smelled nice: cut grass and dew, the fresh earth smell that comes after a week of rain, and Doris' roses. The roar of the mower scared off any nearby birds, but a squirrel was nagging at him from the fence. Doris was inside cooking lunch, and whiffs of the meal would drift from the open kitchen window like little puffs of heaven. It smelled like curry. Nice and warm. Good for the blood and old bones like his.

It was a peaceful moment. A good moment. An honest and serene moment far removed from the battlefields and invasions of his youth. Sometimes Alistair missed those days, those wild, unbelievable adventures. He missed the friends he had lost to far too many wars, and the others whom he had lost touch with and doubted he would meet again. Sometimes he was bored with old age, and aches and pains, and a settled ordinary retirement ( _though there had been that incident with those crazed historical re-enactors and that horned thing, but that was years past, almost a part of his youth — the people present had been_ ). Sometimes…

Then he received the call. Doris stood in the house's doorway waving the phone.

"Alistair! It's for you!"

It was a moment, an average, peaceful, domestic moment. Doris's voice was cheerful. She had a bit of sauce splattered on her apron. Alistair turned off the mower and the birds picked up where the roar left off. Nothing wrong with the world. Nothing ominous. But, as Alistair went to take the phone from his wife, he felt a twinge, a sudden breaking in his chest, and he stumbled.

Later Doris would go over the events of that day with tears. Later she would always say it had been overcast ( _it had been raining all week and the sky was grey down to every tree and chimney-studded horizon_ ). Later…

At the time she ran to him, but not in time to stop his slow-motion fall. She would drop the phone, and John Benton, who had only called to see about a pint at the pub and a reminiscence on old times, would frantically ask the patio deck what was happening. He would hang up and try calling back five times over the next half-hour. Then he would get in his car and drive over, clutching the steering wheel and running two red lights.

Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart never feared his end ( _it made bad sense to fear the unavoidable, better to work around it, or ignore it, or blow it up_ ), but he had always assumed he would die with a gun in his hand. He was a fighting man and knew deep in his heart that he would have a fighting death, but that same heart had other ideas.

It was already too late when Benton tore gasping into the garden. It had been too late from the moment the Brigadier fell to the ground. Doris held her husband's body, and Benton held her, and far above the larks still bravely singing flew.

Age came unexpectedly to claim Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart and steal his assumption that he would go out in a cloud of blood and thunder just as he had lived. It was a bloody ordinary way to go; toppled over in a bed of roses, gone out from old age while trimming the verge. It seemed though, somehow, to be right, correct, and almost pre-ordained, and perhaps the only reason he had survived his turbulent youth.

That peaceful afternoon, as he slipped away quietly in the arms of a woman he loved, the Brigadier decided that there was no shame in an ordinary death as long as the life preceding it had been well lived ( _a man showed his merit by his actions and willingness to duty_ ).

 

 

 _"Pitiful. Can this world do no better than you as its champion?"_  
"Probably. I just do the best I can."  
\- The Destroyer and the Brigadier, in "Battlefield"  


* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=12706>


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